Puppetmaster
by Shaposhit
Summary: Chikaru is caught in an abusive relationship. Although she appears cheery to the public, she expresses her pain and fear through her puppets.


_"Dance, my little puppets, d__ance for me_

_Dance, my little puppets, n__imble as can be_

_All it takes is a twitch of a finger a__gainst a string_

_One little finger. t__o wear her ring_

_Dance, my little puppets, d__ance with me_

_Dance, my lover, now_ let me be_!"_

- Me

"But, Yaya-chan, I can't! I love another!" Flax-colored hair swirled as the speaker spun around, hiding her beautiful, tear-streaked face from her friend.

"Love me, Hikari, and only me!" The voice was angry, torn, and filled with remorse.

"Yaya-chan...I can't...you know how I feel..."

"Please...just, please!" A choked sob was muffled by the close walls and soft surfaces of the bedroom, but no tears filled the golden eyes.

A knock sounded at the door suddenly, making the girl jump. She quickly tossed on a sweater, pulling her legs up onto her bed and underneath the sheets, feeling her cheeks warm to a pleasant rose color. Caught, again!

"Chikaru-san, what the bloody hell are you doing in there? Those two Spica girls aren't with you, are they?" The coarse voice of Chikaru's roomate rang out suspiciously. Chikaru chuckled to herself, imagining the girl's jealous face and over-dramatic eyebrow raising, but her face drained of color until it was the same color as her sheets.

"No, of course not," Chikaru giggled, shoving the tiny puppet-dolls underneath the sheet. She was contemplating the stitching of Hikari's dress when a question from the woman outside the door snapped her to attention. Chikaru stared down at her fingers, entwined with the Yaya-puppet's string, as her overactive imagination provided images much less pleasant; the door slamming up against her face, a hand squeezing her wrist until she cried out, blood. She would have to answer someday, but either way, the answer provided pain.

"Chikaru! Answer me!"

"Not tonight...I'm too tired."

"But we never get around to it!"

"Just...not tonight."

"Whatever." The voice was filled with ugly, thinly-veilled anger. "But I will get what I want from you, and I will get it _soon._" Footsteps sounded loudly, slowly fading until Chikaru had her room to herself and her puppets again. They masqueraded as a simple, common hallway sound, but Chikaru knew they were a warning to her. She shuddered, throwing her mind away from unpleasant topics, and pulling her dolls out again. Her Hikari doll procceeded to cry and sob in a very Hikari-like way, while her Yaya doll apologized endlessly for her actions in a voice that even Yaya would have sworn was her own.

Chikaru moved the dolls through a series of actions, using her long, nimble fingers expertly. Yaya's love festered unrequitedly, Hikari felt guilty (but not guilty enough to let Yaya anywhere near her), and Shizuma showed up to moon over Nagisa (along with Shizuma came Miyuki, of course, who was, in turn, mooning over Shizuma). They all seemed perfect likenesses, down the color of each character's usual attire and voice.

As the evening wore on, more and more puppets were dragged out of Chikaru's closet, until a huge scene lay before her, including Momomi, Tsubomi, Shion, and more people who Chikaru rarely cared enough about to put on puppet shows about them. Several secret love affairs and tangled strings (literally) later, Chikaru found her energy fading. It was so hard to keep all of these people straight.

Soon, she realized that she was just leaning back against her pillow, gazing at this puppet version of Astraea. She found herself going through the puppets one by one, fixing a stitch here and there, but mostly just looking and loving

_They are my puppets...and not just these dolls. Hikari goes to me for love advice, and Nagisa's friends ask me how to cheer her up. I always seem to know what to do. What they don't realize is that I arrange all of it - they'd be surprised to find how long a couple cookies can go towards persuading Miyuki and Shion to decide a certain way on an issue._

_I love watching them play, form friendships and enemies, and fall in and out of love. I love seeing a girl's face when she gets flowers from her girlfriend, or hearing about the latest scandal. I don't take too direct a role in helping people, lest they suspect what I'm doing. My ankle wasn't that badly sprained. I take a passive role in all of my little "influences", bringing friends to find that they are more than friends, revealing secrets._

_I am the master behind the mayhem. The playwright. The puppeteer. Willy Wonka. And they don't suspect a thing...they think that without me, Nagisa would ever have gotten over Shizuma enough to run for Etoile? That Tamao would have realized, and confessed? That ANYTHING in Student Council would be done AT ALL? I love my little puppets and their innocence, I love them so dearly, but most of all, I love my freedom._

_I can see everything. I can watch, and I can wait. I can save a girl from a broken heart, or cause one. I am their protecter, their Satan, their angel, their destroyer. I help where it is deserved, and punish when punishment is needed. I will help them to become better, more free-thinking people, and I always do what I feel is best for them, but I feel like I am not affected by it all. I'm not caught in a mess. My strings aren't tangled. I am free..._

The door creaked open, shoving Chikaru rudely out of her reverie. She sat up quickly in an unsucessful attempt to hide all of her puppets behind her, but her roomate just growled lightly and crossed the room in several long, loose strides.

"You and your stupid puppets!" She growled, a cruel smile crossing her face. "You'd better be ready for me when I come out!" She pulled the bathroom door open with a rude jerk, and entered in a cloud of contempt. Chikaru waited a moment until she heard the water running.

"Oh, Hikari-chan, you don't know how painful it is!" Chikaru whispered, as the Yaya-doll threw her arms out dramatically, her voice heavy with tears. "That I love you, but you cannot love me!"

"Oh, Yaya, that's not true..." Hikari's pitiful murmur was silenced by Yaya's next remark.

"Oh, but it is, my love," Yaya growled, uncharactaristically rough with her friend. "If you really loved me, you would do this for me..."

Yaya pulled Hikari and Chikaru onto the bed forcefully, pulling at the stitches that held Hikari's dress onto her stuffed frame, but when those refused to give, Yaya merely pulled the dress's skirt up with a strange anger and violence that didn't suit the doll's grinning golden eyes and face, or her look-alike. The water in the bathroom shut off, and Chikaru rolled over with a heavy heart, dropping the dolls beneath her bed with a sigh.

As her lover's horrible, terrifying hand appeared, pushing the bathroom door open, and Chikaru slipped off her nightgown unwillingly, already feeling the places where she would have bruises and cuts tomorrow, it struck her that if she hadn't been as withdrawn into her puppet-world, if she had been willing to contact one of her "puppets", if she had been able to sacrifice her role as goddess, sacrifice her pride, she would not be in this predicament.

Pain drove the thought from her mind, as below the bed, Hikari had landed in an unnatrual, twisted position, with Yaya lying over her, as though Yaya had pushed Hikari over. A couple of stitches had been torn out of Yaya's face, altering her face until it looked cruel and demented, and she no longer appeared like Yaya at all.

Another doll witnessed the whole scene...a doll with half-finished, rough features, as though the creator hadn't an idea of how it ought to look, as though the creator hadn't had the heart to keep working on it, and merely left it underneath her bed in disgust. The doll's long black hair was unkempt, her red, ruffled Lulim uniform dirty, and her mouth was twisted into a heart-breaking, melancholy smile.

* * *

**Uh...what did I do?! When I started out, it was just a Chikaru-as-mother-figure fic...she was just talking about how she has a bird's-eye position over her classmates, and can see everything, and influence it. God! Why did I abuse her! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Chikaru-san...I love you anyway. Maybe it's because we had a talk about assault in PE today?**

**Dislcaimer: I don't own Strawberry Panic...if I did, Tamao would have a secret love affair with the Sister.**

**PS: I love Yaya, and I don't believe she is a rapist...well, not really...and neither does Chikaru.  
**


End file.
